99% Invisible - 252- The Falling of the Lenins

Episode Date: March 22, 2017

On the night of December 8, 2013, a huge crowd gathered on a tree-lined boulevard in downtown Kiev, Ukraine. The crowd was there to watch as a statue in the boulevard was pulled down by a crane. The toppled statue … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. The night of December 8, 2013, a huge crowd appeared on a tree-lined boulevard in downtown Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. The crowd was there to watch, as a statue in the boulevard was pulled down by a crane. That's producer Julia Barton. It's a pretty large statue, a little more than 11 feet tall, and as it topples to the ground, the crowd goes wild. The toppled statue was a Vladimir Linnon, the Communist leader who started the revolution that created the Soviet Union, of which Ukraine was once a part.

The sculpture had shown Linnon striding into a breezy future, one that just barely rippled his marble suit coat. But on the night of December 8, 2013, this Lenin was no longer striding into a breezy future, he was lying on the cold concrete, as monument need to be ruined. And that he's a killer. And that it's not the place for Soviet shit here anymore. And Ukrainians are owners of this land. Ukrainian photojournalist Alexander Tchentsky rushed to the scene that night.

He and his colleagues kept their camera steady as the drama unfolded around them. Their footage ended up in a documentary they later made called All Things Oblays. It shows people taking sledgehammers to Lenin's torso. The camera lingers on one man in a shiny tracksuit who spits on his hand, crosses himself three times, and starts whacking away with all his might. But at some point, a thin old guy in a black coat emerges from the crowd and just wraps himself around Lenin's chest. Yeah, he was trying to protect Len with his own body.

And did he say anything other so time? Yeah, he was saying that it's not right, it's not correct. Please don't do that. It's a barbarism. Barbarism. Barbarism, yeah. Another man pats the old communists on the back, a little threateningly. back, a little threateningly. He's saying to this old communist sympathizer,

you're the last one in the whole city, in the whole country understand, when you die, things in this country will get better. Eventually, some volunteers and reflective vests lead the old man away by the arms. His hat is gone. He looks ready to fate." For the protesters, this old man and this statue of Lenin represent old Ukraine, one that is associated with the Soviet Union and with Russia. The protesters saw themselves as

new Ukraine, independent and allied with the European Union. The same protests that brought down that Lenin statue eventually brought about a new government in Ukraine, and that new government in Ukraine. And that new government has been trying to get rid of all kinds of physical reminders of communism and of Russia. Lenin statues, names of streets and towns. But it hasn't always been easy to get rid of these things, logistically or politically, because it erases a part of history that is still important to some Ukrainians. People in a different parts of Ukraine can see that history difference. because it erases a part of history that is still important to some Ukrainians.

People in a different parts of Ukraine can see that history different. That's Katarina Draunova. She's the legal editor at VoxUcrain.org, a website for Ukrainian news and policy analysis. For someone who is a history of oppression for someone, it is the history of, you know, having your town been developed under the Soviet rule in the process of industrialization. To understand all this, we should zoom out a bit. Ukraine is a country about the size of Texas

that is bordered by Russia to the east and the rest of Europe to the west. So it's nestled right between two superpowers, the European Union and Russia. A lot of people in the U.S. still refer to Ukraine as the Ukraine, like the Midwest or the South. A region. It drives Ukrainians crazy. But there is a reason for the mistake. For centuries, Ukraine was a region controlled by more powerful entities around it, and the word Ukraine literally means borderland.

In the 1920s, much of the territory of Ukraine became part of the Soviet Union, despite the efforts of a lot of people who wanted it to be an independent country. In the 1930s, millions of Ukrainians died in a famine that stole and engineered by forcibly taking food from peasants and trapping them into starvation. It was the policy of collectivization.

They would take away the possessions of the people. They would collect the grain from farms and people were starving. Many scholars believe Stalin did this specifically to cripple the movement for Ukrainian independence. A decade later during World War II, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians, especially people in the East,

near what is now Russia, fought and died with the Soviet Red Army. But a smaller, especially people in the east, near what is now Russia, fought and died with the Soviet Red Army. But a smaller number of people in the west, who wanted an independent Ukraine, allied themselves with the Nazis. And the Soviet Union and Germany both wanted control over Ukrainian territory. The territory of Ukraine was the territory of clashes during the Second World War. When it was all over, even more of Ukraine was part of the USSR. Soviet authorities, one of the people of Ukraine,

denied around the narrative that they had defeated the Nazis and that communism would help the country rebuild. The war was destroyed. It was the story about winning the war and coming back victoriously and trying to rebuild the country from scratch. They had to find this inner resource to relaunch the country again, and it was very hard because they came back to empty houses if houses at all, because the territory of Ukraine was heavily bombed.

As part of a campaign to unite Ukraine under the banner of communism, the Soviets put statues of the USSR's founding father Vladimir Lenin everywhere. Ukraine eventually had around 5,500 statues of Lenin. In the whole territory of Russia, which is 28 times the size of Ukraine, there were about 7,000 Lenins. Apart from covering Ukraine in Lenin's, the Soviet Union did help develop and rebuild Ukraine in the years after World War II. Small villages became big industrial cities. But the Soviet regime also imprisoned by some estimates around 2 million Ukrainians in

Gulags. Because the Soviet Union was not a free society with a free press, many people had no idea that kind of repression was happening. This whole oppression and building up labor camps and Gulag in the USSR and this information was not disclosed so people didn't have access to that information. The USSR said, everything is fine as they put up more and more Lenin statues all over Ukraine. Ukraine eventually became the most Leninized territory in the USSR. The Chief State TV channel was halfway through its evening news

when it got the first details of the agreement signed in Minsk. Quoting from it, the anchor woman announced, the Soviet Union no longer exists. In 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Ukraine became its own separate country and so did Russia. But Russia hung on to its Soviet past. Russia, after the collapse of the USSR, officially announced that it is the successor of the USSR. It's kind of the same. They have the music in the national anthem, it's the same. It's just the words that the USSR. It's kind of the same, the music in the national anthem is the same, it's just the words that have changed. [♪ Music playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the background, the music is playing in the music is playing of the country, especially current president Vladimir Putin, never stopped

being proud of the Soviet legacy. Ukraine meanwhile has struggled with its identity, since gaining its independence in 1991. For a very long time, Ukraine was very indecisive, I would say, in international politics. With the country-oriented East, towards Russia, or West, towards Europe. It was hard for Ukraine to completely cut ties with Russia, for one they relied on it for coal and gas. But also, many Ukrainians have strong cultural connections to Russia. Ukrainians have a lot of relatives living in Russia. It's culture, it's family,

and it's business relationship, too, because both nations speak the same language. It's very easy to carry out business activities. For years, the countries seem to vacillate. Some presidents of Ukraine lean west towards Europe, others oriented east toward Russia. And all of those led in statues and other communist symbols in the built environment? In Western Ukraine, where people felt less loyalty to the Soviet era, they got rid of most of them right after independence. But in the rest of Ukraine, they mostly stayed put. The will to remove them just wasn't there.

And then in 2013, the pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych tried to back out of a deal to bring Ukraine closer to joining the European Union. Huge protests broke out. The tide had turned. Ukrainians were in the streets saying they didn't want to be beholden to Russia anymore. These are the same protests that led to the Lenin statue being torn down in Kiev, the one that you heard at the beginning of the story.

But that's not the only statue that came down. People started spontaneously tearing down Lenin's all over Ukraine. So much so that they had a name for it. Leninopod, or the falling of the Lenin's. In February of 2014, following days of bloody protests in which more than 100 protesters were killed, Victor Yanukovych was forced out of the presidency and fled Russia. The protesters in Ukraine established a new government. It had been a violent and shocking few days for Ukraine, but ultimately the protest of

the victorious in their aims to topple Yanukovych and install a new government. Russian President Vladimir Putin didn't like that Ukraine was turning away from Russia and toward the European Union, and in March of 2014 he expressed that by taking control of a part of Ukraine called Crimea. This morning more unidentified pro-Russia armed militias controlling the streets of Crimea's capital. Meanwhile, hundreds of miles to the east. Russian-backed separatists started fighting the Ukrainian

military. Those battles continue today. At least 10,000 people have died. By the end of 2014, Ukraine's new government, now definitively oriented towards the west, had inherited a country in crisis. You might think Lenin removal would be at the bottom of their list. But battles with the separatists made the government want to rid its landscape once and for all of its Soviet past, which was linked with the enemy, Russia. When you have lost a certain territory and you're likely to lose another territory on the east. And you have the community that is extremely polarized the West and East and dismantling Lenin monuments and dismantling the Soviet past in general is a big, very, very powerful

symbol. One year after coming to power, the new government led by Petro Poroshenko decided to make the falling of the Lenins into state policy. His allies in Ukraine's parliament passed a package of bills called decommunization laws. Various post-Soviet countries had already passed similar laws. In Ukraine, these laws did a number of things to outlaw communism, one of which was to ban communist symbols. Local authorities had a year to get rid of their Lenin statues.

If their town or streets had communist names, those had to be changed too. Ukrainians in Harcoph have celebrated the toppling of a monument to former Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin. A 20-meter statue of Soviet dictator Vladimir Lenin has been taken down in the Ukrainian city of Zappolin. Another day, another Lenin monument falls in Ukraine's war-torn east.

Some places in Ukraine got really creative about complying with the decommunization laws. A factory in Odessa hired a sculptor to refashion the figure of Lenin as Darth Vader. Overseen the removal of all these symbols is a government organization, the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. I'm Alina Schbach. I'm the deputy head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. I'm Alina Spock. I'm the deputy head of Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance. Spock told me it's not easy to go from totalitarianism to democracy. That's a very complicated process, definitely. Coming from a totalitarian society up to democratic society.

It's also not easy to erase communism from the built environment. The Soviets made things to last. There are long bridges lined with rot iron hammers and sickles. There are whole forests planted in such a way that if you fly over, you see the cerilic initials for the USSR. And there are neighborhoods that do this too. In Ternopil, for example, when we have a set of building which were built up in such a way so we are stuck in struct letters of USSR letters with buildings.

That's one communist symbol that may have to stay for now. Schbach says the process of decommunizing isn't just about removal, it's also meant to help Ukrainians learn their own history. Which is why in many cases, the Institute of National Remembrance has suggested that towns revert to the names they had before the Soviets change them. This is actually what happened to Katarina Draunovitz hometown. The Institute of National Remembers made a proposition to restore the historical name of the town.

In 2016, the name of her town was restored to come in skia. It is rooted back to 1750 when there were Kosoks settlements. The Soviet name of Katarina's town that it had up until 2016 was Nipro-Jerjinsk. Nipro-Jerjinsk and it's absolutely unpronounceable even for natives. In John of the town, the majority of people just wanted to keep the old, unpronounceable Soviet name, because she says it was just a tiny village before the Soviets set up a metallurgical plant there. The city owes its very existence to the Soviet history.

It has become a town, it has become so big because of the Soviet rule, so it does make sense that there was a big part of the population that opposed to change. But in the end, it didn't matter if the people wanted to keep the name. Their town was named for a prominent Soviet figure, Felix Durginski, who founded the Soviet secret police, and the new law mandated the town's name be changed.

What local communities do not have is the choice to keep the Soviet names. That's Tariq Cyril Amar, a historian of Ukraine and Eastern Europe at Columbia University in New York. This type of, as I would say, fairly ham-fisted attempt at dealing with the Soviet legacy is actually reproducing some of the Soviet legacy, some of the habits of doing things to Soviet way. And this is a major criticism of the decommunization loss that Ukraine is being kind of authoritarian

about separating from their authoritarian past. Not just because people don't get to say in whether they change the name of their town, but because the laws also make it illegal to join the Communist Party or display any kind of Soviet symbols or to deny the quote criminal nature of the Soviet regime. It is forbidden to deny the criminal nature and the criminal nature is not defined so we're not even sure about what we're not allowed to deny a question. Scholars we spoke to for this story oppose these parts of the decommunization laws, the ones that seem to limit freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Drawniva believes the law is too ambiguous. It's unclear if, for example, wearing a t-shirt with Karl Marx on it could make you criminally liable.

Since the formal process of removing communist symbols began in 2014, more than 50,000 objects have been renamed. This includes cities, towns, villages, streets, squares, and parks. And more than 2,000 monuments and memorials have been taken down or modified. In general, these changes have been hardest on Ukraine's older population. The people who lived under Soviet rule who didn't understand how bad it was for some people. Because there wasn't a free press or freedom in academia, the extent of the repression was hidden from the general public.

Some Ukrainians are now just funny now that millions of people died because of Stalin, and that millions more were put into Gulags. These notions of oppressions, the facts and statistics, come to them as a big revelation right now, and there is a denial. There's been a lot of change in Ukraine in the past couple of decades, and it's still volatile. Over a million people have been displaced, and some eastern parts of the country are locked in semi-permanent conflict with Russia. You live in this permanent condition of not knowing what's going to happen next and what

to expect, that's why it is easier for someone who has been living under the Soviet troops feeling nostalgic about it. Donovan says that for now, many Ukrainians have shifted away from wanting to be allied with Russia and toward wanting to be allied with the EU. But Russia still exerts a lot of political influence, and there are pro-Russia forces within the country that could cause trouble for a long time. Despite feeling like some parts of the decommunization laws are too ambiguous, Dronova thinks that removing communist symbols in public spaces is an important

step as Ukraine continues to develop as an independent nation. I think it is. I think it is because I think it should have been done earlier. It should be understood that it's never easy to do that. They all would always be a certain percent of the population who would strongly oppose that change. population would strongly oppose that change. It's tricky for Ukraine, for any country, really, to figure out how to leave behind symbols of oppression without completely denying and erasing the past. In Lithuania, which was also part of the USSR,

they threw a lot of their Lenin, Stalin, and Karl Marx statues into one park, Grudis Park, unofficially called, Stalin's World. And the park is open for visitors. So those people who feel very sentimental about the whole communist part and communist issues, they are welcome to come there,

visit and enjoy the view of the big land statues in the multiple variations around. Ukraine doesn't have any such park, but there have been some efforts to acknowledge the existence and loss of these monuments. For a week in 2016, a group got permission to put a temporary installation around the empty pedestal and Kiev

that used to hold the same linen we heard being toppled at the beginning of this story. The installation consisted simply of metal stairs that people could ascend to stand on a platform placed over the pedestal and then descend on the other side. In the process, they could see the world from Lenin's perspective. And of course, take a selfie.

A Ukrainian curator who helped organize the installation says it's, quote, a way of asking what a monument is for, and everyone decides for themselves. That's because she says, decommunization starts first in the mind. 99% Invisible Was Produced This Week by Julia Barton and Katie Mingle with Sharifusa, Emmett Fitzgerald, Delaney Hall, Avery Trouffleman, and me Roman Mars. Kurt Colstead is Digital Director Terran Mazza is the Office Manager. Music This Week by Ok Akumi, Melodium, and our own, Sean Rial. Special thanks to David Marples, Alex Klymanov, Misha Friedman, and Katarina Draunova. We are a project of 91.7 KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row.

In beautiful, downtown, Oakland, California. Remember radio topia is touring the west coast from May 8th through the 12th. If you're in Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, or LA, you have to be there. It's a requirement. Go to radiotopia.fm slash live for tickets. If you want to see us in San Francisco, this is pretty much your last chance for tickets. We're nearly sold out already. Portland is on the brink too, so act fast.

We're in really big rooms in Seattle and LA, so you'd nerds better step up. I fought for you, called a couple of friends, and make a night of it. You know who's on the tour? Criminal. One of the first and still the best, true crime podcast. Yeah, you heard me.

Criminal tells stories of people who've broken the law and been caught, some people that've broken the law and been caught, some people that have broken the law and gotten away with it, victims, cops, and people caught somewhere in the middle. Every episode is completely different. You never quite know what you're going to get. Some are really hilarious, some are tragic, but I simply adore every single episode. It'll change the way you look at the world around you.

You need to see them live if you're on the West Coast, but if you can't be there for some dumb reason, get to know criminal at this is criminal.com or subscribe and I change the way you look at the world around you. You need to see him live if you're on the west coast, but if you can't be there for some dumb reason, get to know criminal at this is criminal.com or subscribe and iTunes, Google Play, or whatever you get podcasts. In addition to the tour, I also have a one-off live show in LA on April 14th with Helen Zoltzman of the Illusionist. It's a benefit show. All proceeds go to Arts4LA.

If you like art art and are a little nervous about art's funding as you should be, and like nerdy humor and obscure facts about seemingly boring things, this will be the night of your life. We'll have full details for the 99% Illusional Arts4LA benefit on our website. on our website. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook. You can tweet at me at Roman Mars and the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram and Tumblr too. But if you want to read all about logo doppelgangers, that's been a very popular post this week. You have to go to 99pi.org. Radio to P.I. From PRX.